Mega-church North Point Community Church in Georgia, USA wants to build a $5 million bridge to ease parking congestion.
$5 Million Bridge to Somewhere: Tie it to the Purpose
Let's Build a Bridge
Church building campaigns can be hard for congregations to swallow. But how about building a $5 million bridge to ease parking congestion for a church?
That's what North Point Community Church outside Atlanta, Ga., is doing with their Let's Build a Bridge campaign. When I first saw it I literally thought it was a joke. As the opening copy explained:
Are you tired of sitting in the parking lot for twenty minutes after church? Do you hesitate to invite friends to church because of the complexity of getting on and off our campus? Have you ever skipped the closing song to beat the crowds to lunch?
Therefore North Point needs a $5 million, three-lane bridge that spans 1,000 feet of floodplain and wetlands. It's no joke. As North Point pastor Andy Stanley explains, this has been nine years in the making.
Is church attendance really the goal of what the church should be about?
What sort of disciples is the church producing if skipping the last song for the sake of getting home early is a common practice?
What does this church imagine fellowship or community building is about?
Has the church as corporation overtaken the body as community?
How does any church position itself as a different form of organism if it just replicates what other human groups do?
This isn't a snipe at a particular big church in America. These are questions we have to face at every size of congregation- whether you have 20 people or 2,000 people the questions must be faced up to, particularly when a congregation is growing.
The SMH reports today that Brian Houston will be expanding the Hillsong empire into Brisbane, and thence to other cities. Apparently an existing Australian Christian Churches (AOG) church will be rebranded as "Hillsong Brisbane" and Brian and wife Bobbie will be installed as Senior Pastors. A previous pastor was thrown out because the church wanted a CEO style of pastor rather than a pastoral pastor, and more to the point the church was not growing and the previous pastor had had a nervous breakdown.
There is so much that is wrong with this story, if the facts even vaguely line up with the reality.
Let me say that I have a great regard for Brian Houston and what he has achieved with Hillsong. The Hillsong church has done a lot to inspire churches and pastors to get out of the old paradigms and comfort zones- establishing new ones which need to be challenged again.
So there's a large church in Brisbane which is struggling because it's failing to grow numerically. In fine Pentecostal tradition they blame the pastor- as John Maxwell says "everything rises and falls with the leader." They chuck him out with little regard for their responsibility to him- not as an employer but as a christian body.
They lust for the "success" that the Houston name seems to bring so they install Brian and Bobbie as Senior Pastor.
Here are my issues:
1. Brisbane is not Sydney- so why do they think that the Hillsong model should be right for Brisbane?
2. What is meant by a CEO pastor? This is an oxymoron, a contradiction. The roles of CEO and pastor are very different. The imagining of the Body of Christ as a corporate business operation is a total distortion of everything that Jesus died for.
3. Is growth an end in itself? The mega-church phenomenon has always been about attracting a crowd through great entertainment and spectacular "inspiring" preaching. There is far less concern about disciple making and no concern about whether the growth is from genuine conversion or from merely sucking in christians from other churches.
4. It is simply not possible for someone in Sydney to pastor a church in Brisbane. You cannot pastor a community that you are not a part of.
5. The worship of the man, the cult of the leader, has been the biggest weakness in pentecostal churches. The strength has been the freedom of pastors to lead and preach with the authority of their gifting. But this has been twisted over the last couple of decades to become a cult of personality around the charismatic leaders. This is not unique to pentecostal churches- I read a report a few years ago about declining Uniting Church congregations in one region of Sydney where there was a common hope that if they could get the "right minister" everything would be O.K.
We need to understand that the ministry of the church is the responsibility of the whole body, and not just the Senior Pastor or other "staff" members. Getting The Man is not what we should be about.
Pastors are not super-stars- except in their own fantasies. Ephesians 5 clearly paints the 5-fold ministry gifts as being about encouraging the whole body to grow to maturity. If we see the ministry as about one man brining salvation and significance to the congregation (I'm not talking about Jesus!) then we are worshipping the wrong Messiah.
6. Preaching and teaching come from the shared life of a community of faith. Preaching, even in a large crowd, is an interaction, a shared event. What will happen in this arrangement is that eventually (if not immediately) when Brian is in Sydney, the message will be beamed in by internet or satellite so that the satellite congregation can get the best teaching/ performance every week. This already happens in the U.S. as the mega-churches franchise out their operations to other cities or other campuses in the same city.
Think about this: would you rather get a relevant word shaped by our context together or a well presented but generic message from somewhere else? An extreme example of this is that while much of Australia is undergoing an economic recession, Narrabri is undergoing good economic times because we had quite good rural production last year. Does Brian preach a word for the good times or a word for the tough times when we get his message beamed in?
7. This is the last extension of modernity in the church. Modernity, in the cultural use of the term, relates to the way our technological culture with its emphasis on efficiency, achievement and "success" has changed the way that we think of ourselves. Post-modernism is a reaction to that with an emphasis on relationship and expression rather than production. The baby boomers were the ultimate products of modernism where even the church became just another corporation selling a branded product. The post-baby boom generations are seeking authentic relationships and community (not corporate) values. The growth of cell church and house church movements, the resurgence of incarnational and missional movements (the church has to take Jesus to the heart of our cities and towns and not just expect people to turn up at an event), the growth of christian arts communities- all of these things are pointing to a new way of doing things.
The Willow Creek movement has discovered huge failings in the way they did church. Their problem was that church services were focussed on "seekers" (i.e. people) and not on the transcendent God. Hillsong and many pentecostal churches do something similar in that everything focusses on a sharp, efficient presentation with no room in the programme for the Holy Spirit.
8. I really believe that Brian Houston's ministry gift is apostle not pastor. He has tremendous influence way past the local congregation. But he is straying from the New Testament model by installing himself as a pastor in these various offshoot churches. He should abandon the title of pastor altogether and take on board his real calling. This would require him to cut his formal ties with the various Hillsong churches. They could still pay him a salary or a tithe or whatever, but not as a pastor. He could travel from church to church and speak to them as a visiting apostle and with greater authority. I believe that the local church must be led by a local pastor who is in a father-son relationship with an apostle. But the apostle must allow the pastor to lead his own flock and not seek to control the pastor or the congregation.
I find myself very disturbed, though strangely unsurprised by this development. I think that there will be severe problems in the long term, and it may sound the death knell of the Australian Christian Churches as a denomination- in the same way that ordaining homosexual ministers was the death knell of the Uniting Church.
In the place of these institutional juggernauts we will see, over the next 50 years or so the rise of genuine relational apostolic networks and the complete reformation of the church.
The Taliban has warned Pope Benedict XVI that he will feel "the consequences of a severe reaction" if Christianity is allowed to be preached in Afghanistan.
The Taliban has warned Pope Benedict XVI that he will feel "the consequences of a severe reaction" if Christianity is allowed to be preached in Afghanistan.He was also asked to stop any attempts by "crusaders" to convert Muslims to Christianity.
The warning was made as Pope Benedict began an eight-day tour of the Middle East on Friday. This is his first papal tour of the Holy Land.
According to the ANSA news service, the Taliban issued a statement on an Islamic website following video footage by Al Jazeera showing U.S. soldiers with Bibles translated into the local Afghan languages.
The statement, on the website Alemarah1.org, said, "The Islamic Emirate in Afghanistan asks Pope Benedict XVI to act to stop the foolish and irresponsible actions of the crusaders upsetting the feelings of Muslim rebels, without awaiting the consequences of a severe reaction."
"The Taleban forcefully exhort the mujaheddin [jihadis], scholars and all religious circles to control the activities of the invaders and crusaders, and not allow anyone to preach religions except Islam," the message continued.
Afghan Muslims have been urged by the Taliban to resist conversion to another religion.
The U.S. Army said the Bibles were never distributed and were confiscated and destroyed. Army officials also confirmed that proselytism by active troops was forbidden
There are two things to note here. Firstly the notorious Taleban recognises the power of the gospel to set men and women free from all forms of oppression. Secondly the response of false religious spirits to the gospel is violence. God is clearly moving powerfully in Afghanistan- and it's not about soldiers with Bibles.
Christians can be particularly resistant to new things, even though God delights in making old things new-- especially people!
But we love to cling to the old ways that are so familiar... the safe ways, the ways we know.
It's like when you first get your satellite navigation system and find that it wants you to go a different way to the one you always take.
Do you trust the new-fangled gadget against the years of wisdom you've accumulated. Do you boldly go where no man has gone before (well where you have not gone before)? Or do you keep to the tried and tested route?
If somebody suggests something new in church, do you embrace the sense of adventure or flee from the fear of the unknown?
I came across this interesting experiment this afternoon, and frankly it excited me. Wow! Imagine doing a "flash mob" as a form of worship/ prayer. Imagine a bunch of normal people suddenly emerging from a normal crowd, separating themselves out and walking to a nearby park to pray together. Hardly scary stuff, I would have thought. Any way here's the video of one such event in Liverpool, England.
So I thought we could pull that off in Narrabri with a smaller crowd and in the main street. I put up the video and created an event in facebook and sent an email to the other ministers.
The responses from my colleagues were, well unexpected but rather predictable.
One church said "weird but lots of fun- but we will all be away for the weekend", which is OK I guess- that church does seem to have lots of long weekends. At least they were open to the idea.
Another church seemed worried about the possibility of smelly feet... a common enough fear in that part of the woods and seems to come up in connection with foot washing services and enactments of the life of Moses. They did mention that they felt that it might be seen as weird for a conservative town, when christians are already considered weird.
Another response was that praying is good but loving people is better- which I thought was a little odd, because I was thinking half an hour out of a day might still give you lots of time to love on people. That was a Pentecostal pastor and also afraid of being seen to be weird- which, when you think about it is well, weird.
So it looks like a really cool idea won't go forward here just yet- and that's all right because not every good idea is a God idea, and not every God idea is right for now.
So I seem to be the bold adventurous, "out there" guy who is the pastoral equivalent of a bungee jumper- ironic considering I'm normally so conservative and I hate heights.
My point is this- we need to find different ways of engaging the community. We have to stop relying on our old tried and true methods because, frankly they aren't working.
The problem is not that people think christians are weird not in the way they think Hare Krishnas are weird for example. The problem is that they think we are weird in altogether boring kinds of ways.
We need to become less boring, less predictable, less safe... more like the Old Testament prophets or, dare I suggest it, more like Jesus.
Missional: A Double Edged Sword That Cuts Deep March 23, 2009 - 1:25pm by Thomas
When the idea of missional is spoken of it is almost always in good terms. When a church community is being missional it is living out the gospel all days and at all times. Friendships are closer. The community is more tight knit. There is more than just a "worship service." There is living, breating, heart-beating community.
When anything is living and breathing with a beating heart a cut from a sword hurts. That's kind of obvious, but it didn't really sink in until a bunch of "stuff" (for a lack of a better or worse word) happened within our community at The Plant. No one worry, everything is alright and I am still having a blast being part of a community that is trying to find its way on a journey toward being missional in suburbia, but being missional, though it is great to be a close knit community and build strong friendships, well, sometimes being missional kind of sucks. It cuts deep.
None of this used to matter at the big evangelical churches I had attended over the past few years. Someone lives in disobedience, someone likes another church better, someone wants to worship at night, someone wants a better kids program, someone wants a drama or dance team----these were all excuses that rolled of the shoulders of the big evangelical church. People were consumers. That was the model that made or broke you. And it was just a fact of life being in that type of community. The vast majority of the time it was no big deal when a person or family left a church. They just attended.
In our missional community you don't just attend. You participate. You're not a member, you're a partner. There is a big difference. It's a great, awesome, and powerful difference. But sometimes it hurts. Becuase when people matter, their stuff matters, and their leaving or gossip or sins or anger now really matter. They rip the fabric of the community. They breed malice and bitterness and distrust.
I am really beginning to understand the nervousness I have always sensed in Paul and Peter's letters but never been able to relate to until now. When you are in a purposeful community the ugly side of church becomes a much higher stakes game. Missional is a double edged sword that cuts into the hearts of peoples lives and brings them to follow Christ, but it also, when something goes wrong, cuts deep.
So what to do? Well, nothing. Jesus or the apostles never said it would be easy. Christ gives us an easy burden, but it is still a burden. It is still sometimes hard.
It may not be a coincidence that the various ordeals of our church plant have crept up during Lent. As we remember Christ's time in the wilderness, his temptations, his foreshadowed crucifixion, it's comforting in a way beyond words. Christ has gone before us and has been tempted in everyway. He also had great joy in life spending time with his disciples. He also got angry or frustrated with them. Being a group is complicated.
That's it. No words of wisdom from me other than: being missional---living in community---it's complicated.
Next Reformation offers the following tips for changing the mind-set of churches about being christian in a post-Christendom world.
Instilling missional habits..
David Fitch asks how we lead a church community to engage mission as a way of life? How do we train a congregation out of Christendom habits and instil post Christendom virtues? Curiously, I had a conversation a few mornings ago and was reminded of a comment Todd Hunter made some years ago. “Nurture the kind of life and practices you want; starve those you don't want.” Dave advocates the gentle rejection of certain assumptions and practices in favour of a missional imagination and missional practices. He lists nine items, and this is the shorthand..
1.) Kindly Reject doing Outreach Events. Instead direct imagination towards ways of connecting with people where they are.
2.) Kindly Reject evangelism as a one time hit on a target with a preconceived outcome. Kindle imagination toward seeing mission as part of regular daily, weekly and monthly life rhythms.
3.) Kindly reject building multiple use buildings as if by building a gymnasium on the church campus we can bring people into the orbit of the church. We should build less third spaces, and inhabit more the ones already there.
4.) Kindly reject one-on-one evangelism and the techniques associated with such apologetic persuasion. Instead direct imagination for inhabiting places in two’s or three’s or more. Hospitals, the school systems, the park districts … two or three Christians together become an undeniable force for the kingdom under the Lordship of Christ.
5.) Kindly reject the Sunday morning gathering as an evangelistic event for it cannot be that in the new post Christendom cultures. Instead fire up imagination for the formation that comes from a communal encounter with the living God in Jesus Christ.
6.) Kindly reject coercive persuasion and argument in our witness. Instead stoke the imagination of your people for seeking “one person of peace” (Luke 10) among the lost of their neighbourhoods.
7.) Kindly reject presumptuous postures of power as we live our lives among those who do not know Christ yet. Instead direct the imagination towards the way Christ always enters the human situation in humility. Come to your neighbours humbly and in need. Instead of offering them a meal, find ways to participate in a meal with them. If you’re in the suburbs ask them if you can borrow their lawnmower.
8.) Kindly Reject Surveying the neighbourhood - Direct the imagination toward exegeting the neighbourhood. Surveying looks at the neighbourhood as a place to market our church,- Exegeting a neighbourhood requires inhabiting the neighbourhood, discovering where the hurting are and the unjust structures are.
9.) Kindly Reject problem solving - instead direct the imagination towards “appreciative inquiry.” We often approach church through problem solving. What is wrong with our programs? What needs are we not meeting? What needs to be tweaked? What are we not doing right? This is negative, mechanical and lifeless.
I suggest # 10 .. 10. Kindly reject strategic planning in favour of thoughtful preparation. We really don’t know the future… but we know that the Spirit is birthing his kingdom among us as we respond faithfully day by day. We keep our eyes on Jesus. Newbigin warned us that, “the significant advances of the church have not been the result of our own decision about the mobilizing and allocating of “resources” [rather] the significant advances have come through happenings of which the story of Peter and Cornelius is a paradigm, in ways of which we have no advance knowledge.” (The Open Secret)
Alan Hirsch reminds us that pilgrimage is an essential part of spiritual formation. (Note in Hirsch's terminology communitas is the deep community that is formed when a group of people face a life-threatening experience together, and is the essential ingredient missing in most churches today)
One of the things that the story of Abraham, the mateship of sports teams, the desperate comradeship of war veterans, the fellowship of the Lord of the Rings, and the mad messianic rabbits of Watership Down, teach us is that the journey itself is important. That maturity and self-actualization require movement and risk, and that adventure is actually very good for the soul. They all teach is that a deep form of togetherness and love is found when we embark on a common mission of discovery, when we encounter danger together and have to find each other in the process in order to survive. We find all these elements in the way Jesus formed his disciples as together they embarked on a journey away that took them from their homes, family, and securities (be they social or religious) and set out on an adventure that involved liminality, risk, action reflection learning, communitas, and spiritual discovery. On the way their fears of inadequacy and lack or provision faded only to be replaced by a courageous faith that went on to change the world forever.
And what makes phenomenal Jesus movements so dynamic is that they actually involve movement, and this is not just describing the organizational structure and system, but the fact that there is real motion. This is not to say that every Christian literally left home and family to follow Jesus, but that the foundational spiritual transaction of laying down all in the name of Jesus lay at the very base of all of their subsequent following. In this way they had made a abiding decision to enter into the liminality of leaving securities and comforts when they first became Christians and so didn’t have to try and factor it in later. This meant that they remained a liquid people, constantly adapting and evolving, depending on context. This was to continue until Constantine gave us buildings and an institution and a bond between church and state that was to put Apostolic Genius to sleep for a long, long, time.
We need to hit the road again. We are the people of the Way and our path lies before us, inviting us into a new future in which we are permitted to shape and participate. In trying to rearticulate the nature of authentic Christian community; that of a communitas formed around a mission and undertaken by a group of uncertain but brave comrades, by evoking mythic imagery from great stories, and calling to mind how Jesus and the early Church went about spreading the message, we evoke that yearning and that willingness to undertake an adventurous journey of rediscovery of that ancient force called Apostolic Genius.
There is a huge immigration debate in America. Our borders are overrun with illegal migrant workers who are often depicted as: aliens, uneducated, dirty, fruit pickers, field hands. These prejudicial images and stereotypes aren’t pretty.
Against this backdrop, I had a detailed dream where I was standing in a sea of people before the throne of God. I saw well known ministers, invisible ministers, people who had falsely accused me, people who had justly accused me, and many people I didn’t know. Weird, but everyone had a black spot on their chest. The numbers were too vast to count. I was standing pretty close to a tele-evangelist known for $1,000 suits and for boasting of many healings. I had the distinct impression he was impatiently waiting for the Lord to hand him a microphone!
We were all wearing name badges and (like military insignias) badges of rank. The Lord spoke to this vast group yet we each heard him as if he were only speaking to us individually, “Lay down your ministry, your vision, your promises. I have new assignments for each of you.” We all assumed a promotion. Then all went dead silent while the Holy Spirit ministered to each of us. To me he spoke, “I want you to become a field hand, a migrant worker. Go pick fruit.”
Thought provoking post from the Next Reformation blog.
12.08.08 Becoming missional - What will you abandon?
Dave writes,
“Too many churches in America are failing to make disciples of non-disciples. The mission of many churches is internally focused on more people, more money, and more buildings, rather than externally focused on the mission of Jesus. Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, has discovered that it is not what you add to your life, it is what you abandon that will make the difference.
“Churches need to abandon those beliefs and practices that hinder the expansion of the kingdom. Churches in America must no longer measure success by size, must no longer be preoccupied with buildings and property, must no longer focus on Christian education without emphasizing life transformation, must no longer focus on the church instead of the harvest, and must no longer depend on professional clergy to do the work of ministry, discipleship, and evangelism. Instead, they must train every member to engage those in the culture with the gospel.
“What is God telling you to abandon?” From Missional Challenge
Allan Roxborough and his colleagues at Allelon have produced some great resources on the theme of leading the church in the post-Christendom era.
One of their analogies is the use of maps to describe the shifting sociological forces at work. Just as you keep a map of the neighbourhood in your head that helps you navigate through your daily life, we all have "maps" of how our society/ community works and how the church fits into that. They argue that the old maps are no longer relevant because our society has changed so dramatically over the last 40 years. It's like using a 1960 street directory to navigate around Sydney- it might work in parts but mostly it's not going to get you to where you want to be.
In this article, Len Hjalmarson compares leaders to navigators rather than map-readers.
navigators, not map readers by Len Hjalmarson
Eddie Gibbs writes, “The Church needs navigators tuned to the voice of God, not map-readers. Navigational skills have to be learned on the high seas and in the midst of varying conditions produced by the wind, waves, currents, fog banks, darkness, storm clouds and perilous rocks.” (Leadership Next, 66).This is a significant insight. While we have generally located ourselves on maps based on a predictable rate of change to the surrounding landscape, we are now in a time where the pace of change outstrips our ability to locate ourselves. Moreover, the increasing fragmentation of western culture makes context king - adaptive responses must be local. (Perhaps this was already true twenty years ago and the universalising tendency of modernity simply made us blind to the fact.)
Navigation is a significantly different skill than map reading. The points on a map are fixed, and so when one wants to locate a point in the real world one simply locates oneself by known geography or artifacts, and then proceeds step by step methodically to the next point. If you have a compass, this is really, really easy.
But navigation requires no fixed planetary points and requires no compass. Instead, one learns to read the sky - the stars, really. Map reading is a skill that can be learned on a table top in any school room. Any ten year old can master it. And with a compass, any ten year old can go out and use that knowledge with a high degree of confidence. This skill is only useful, however, when the landscape is not changing.
Navigation, on the other hand, is a skill that does not ask for a predictable landscape. And it is learned in the wilderness or on the ocean. It requires courage and the ability to withstand harsh conditions. And it requires something that is never required of map readers: faith and a fundamental inner restfulness. When there are no physical points to locate ourselves, we rely on an imaginal map - an internal compass. That internal compass is tuned not to earthly points, but to a fixed purpose and an external reference point - the North star.
Map readers, and navigators, are actually two different kinds of people (See Johnson, Who Moved My Cheese?) While it is possible to make map readers into navigators, it is not easy, and some will never make the transition. Map readers as leaders make good managers; navigators as leaders are explorers. Map readers love predictability; navigators enjoy complexity. Map readers are impatient with process; navigators enjoy the journey. Map-reading is a lonely vocation; navigators value company.
Wall Street Trader Becomes a Monk by Abayea Pelt 10-03-2008
Saint Isaac of Syria said, “This life has been given to you for repentance. Do not waste it on vain pursuits.” And at least one trader has exchanged the vanity of Wall Street for a life of penance and prayer. Perhaps the monastic discipline of holding loosely to the things of this world (if at all) is a good model in this time of crisis and uncertainty. From the Telegraph:
Hristo Mishkov had a successful career as a broker on the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York until he decided to give it all up to return to his native Bulgaria. His radical change of circumstances may start to look appealing to the tens of thousands of finance sector employees who face the bleak prospect of losing their jobs. …
“Many people … in the world do not realise that they have not earned the food they eat, that they take without giving,” said Mr. Mishkov, 32, who worked for Karoll, one of Bulgaria’s leading brokerages.
“But if someone consumes more than they have earned, it means someone else is starving.”
Abayea Pelt is the office manager and receptionist for Sojourners.
It seems that the Uniting Church is coming to terms with its looming fate. Unfortunately they are not seeing that the cause of its decline is its own apostasy. People have deserted the UCA because it has too long been preaching a gospel that is not from the Bible- acceptance of homosexual marriage, acceptance of abortion, salvation by "niceness" rather than by faith.
Ironically, I believe the UC could turn around and return to its former glory but only through repentance from the top down.
Niall Reid advocates a kind of underground movement led by "worker priests" but that will be just more of the same until they recover the true gospel.
Here is the article from the SMH
Church may profit from doom
Sinners' market … Niall Reid says the church should let go of its "sacred spaces".
Linda Morris Religious Affairs Writer September 30, 2008
THE head of the Uniting Church in NSW has implored his church to start selling its underutilised churches, manses and halls and give the proceeds to the poor and disadvantaged.
Faced with dwindling congregations and conceding the church could all but disappear in 30 years, the Reverend Niall Reid says the church should let go of its "holy, sacred spaces as beautiful as they may be" and work to establish an "underground" community of faithful that connects with the spiritual needy in pubs, on beaches and in shopping malls.
His radical vision was presented at the Uniting Church's annual meeting at Canterbury Racecourse at the weekend and comes as the church recently valued its property assets including schools and aged care facilities at $3.9 billion. With land, the assets of the church could be double that.
But owning property that is hardly used or is inefficient or ineffective was like burying resources for ministry "in a hole in the ground", he said. Selling church property might add renewed vitality in the church or, without a shopfront, the church experiment could fail but at least it would go out with a "blast, not a whimper".
"I think it is about time we started selling our assets, giving to the poor literally and in the sense of using our resources to help people experience the kingdom of God because they experience it in our life, in our conviction, in the priority we give to others and not ourselves.
"It is about letting go; it is about letting them [churches] be resources not there to serve us, but to serve the community we live in - I do not believe that in our time we can afford too many places that are designated as untouchable, holy, sacred spaces, as beautiful as they may be - as we worship God together we can create sacred places and times at very little cost."
Mr Reid suggests that church property could be sold to fund ministries in disadvantaged areas. Alternatively, some churches could better share their assets with the community, providing space rent-free.
A remodelled church might also include fewer paid ministers and more worker priests who hold down a full or part-time job and juggle their role as spiritual adviser.
"Where we are not reliant on maintaining unsuitable buildings and paying stipends and providing manses we may find we come closer to entering the kingdom of God, our image of the church will change - not the steepled building in every suburb adorned with Uniting Church logo - but rather the image of the underground church - communities of faith in homes, workplaces, in coffee shops, shopping malls, parks, pubs, on beaches, existing without the need for council approval or building permits."
These decisions had the ability to set the Uniting Church apart: "If we start using our resources to work towards developing an underground church now, in 20 years we may not be so rich, having used up our resources, but just possibly we will be experiencing a wonderful harvest of people and riches of a different order."
Pastor Jean-Baptiste tells this story of when he was a teacher in a Christian school: “There were two Muslim girls in my class. They were intelligent girls, but they would fall asleep in class. I called them to come and chat. ‘Monsieur’, they said, ‘it is because we are hungry.’ I checked out and found there were 20 people in their families with hardly any food. I was given some money and bought their families five sacks of millet. I told them to use the millet for the whole family, but that there was one sack for each girl. The father of one of the girls thought I wanted to marry her, and that was why I had given the food! I told him that it wasn’t that, but that they were intelligent girls and I wanted them to come to school with a full stomach so they could study. That girl became a Christian. Today she is the minister for Human Rights in the Burkina government. And she loves Jesus.”
Jared Wilson has been writing some great stuff on the difference between missional and attractional churches. His latest, on the reasons for worship is excellent.
Missional and Attractional, Part 7
Any consideration of the so-called "attractional church" must consider the recipient of nearly all its energy and resources -- the weekend worship service.
In this series I have been highlighting contrasts proposed between the attractional church and the missional church by the following chart:
In this installment, I am briefly exploring the 14th, 15th, and 16th contrasts as a way of demonstrating the (practically) diametrically opposed paradigms of each model for their worship service vision.
Worship as Attraction vs. Worship as Reflection
I have previously suggested that the raison d'etre of the attractional church is to get as many people as possible through the doors and into a worship service so that they may (ostensibly) receive information on how to a) have a relationship with God or b) live a Christian life. This is a good and sincere motive, and plenty of seeker churches and their attractional worship services have planted seeds for the salvation of sinners.
But all too often this mindset leads to a "whatever it takes" blurring of lines between who is being glorified in our worship. A former church of mine played a song by folk-rock artist Ben Harper called "My Own Two Hands." The inclusion of this song is quite in keeping with the approach this church takes to the worship service: it was added because a) it is a mainstream song that can connect with an unchurched audience, and b) it shared some of the themes of that morning's message. But as our congregation watched and listened to our worship musicians singing an ode to the potential of humanity (the lyrics include the line "I can change the world with my own two hands . . .") the question occurred to me (and several others) "Who exactly are we worshiping?"
This has very little to do with style -- I don't happen to believe that style is neutral, but that is a subject for another time -- and everything to do with the intended audience of a worship service. For the attractional paradigm, the audience is the unchurched congregant and the disillusioned Christian congregant, so nearly every aspect is tailored for comfort, enjoyment, accommodation, and -- way too often -- entertainment. One church I read about recently played Australian rock group Jet's paean to one-night stands, "Are You Gonna Be My Girl?," for no apparent reason other than that it's a rockin' song they hoped people would enjoy hearing.
More and more attractional churches are banking on video presentations, elaborate stage sets and props, larger and more polished bands, less God-centered songs, programmed lighting effects, lasers, fog, giveaways, gourmet goodies and beverages, and numerous other enticements to make church seem less like the stereotype of church. To be clear, not all of these things are bad. But the indiscriminate and thoughtless incorporation of them is.
In many missional churches, by contrast, the worship in the worship service is clearly and intentionally about and for God himself. The audience is not anyone in the pews, Christian or not. The audience is God. The music is chosen based primarily on what most makes most of God. It is not arranged with a singing congregation out of mind, but it is not arranged for the singing congregation but for the One they will be singing to. In this mindset, worship is then not a malleable creative element designed to attract a particular churchgoing demographic; it is a reflection of the goodness and glory and grandeur of our sovereign triune God.
These disparate mindsets affect the tone of preaching in worship services, as well.
Preaching as Application vs. Preaching as Proclamation
In the attractional church, the messages are predominantly of the "life application" variety meant to make the Christian walk seem more practical or relatable or appealing. In the missional church, the messages are predominantly explorations of what God has done.
This is not to say that applicational preaching cannot or does not contain any proclamation, or that proclamational preaching cannot or should not contain application. In fact, the best preaching contains both proclamation and application. The difference lay in the amounts of each and, again, the primary intention of the message. In short, the typical applicational message tends to over-emphasize our good works while a good proclamational message emphasizes God's finished work.
I will explore this discrepancy more fully in the next installment in this series, but the essential difference between applicational preaching and proclamational preaching depends on how much the preacher wishes to make of the gospel. Proclamational preaching makes much of the gospel, believing that proclaiming the finished and sufficient work of Christ for salvation is, as Paul says, "of first importance." The applicational preacher either presupposes the gospel or relegates it to the conclusion of his message, believing that of most importance is exhorting the congregation to live in more Christlike ways.
To be clear (again): We should be exhorting our congregations to live in more Christlike ways. But if the emphasis of our preaching is on being more like Jesus and not on the good news of grace despite our not being able to be like Jesus, we end actually achieving the opposite of our intent. We inadvertently become legalists, actually, because we are more concerned with works and behavior than Christ's work on our hearts. The great irony is that despite hoping to win the unchurched with the message of the good news, we end up enticing them with a Christian form of self-help or behavior modification, neither of which has ever saved anyone.
The proclamational preacher, though, preaches the texts of Scripture with God as the subject and the gospel at the forefront, and he does so without shame, trusting not his words or his demeanor to win souls, but the work of the Holy Spirit.
How a church approaches these two primary elements of a worship gathering (not to mention how they approach the sacraments) stems from and feeds its view of the worship service in general.
Weekend as Event vs. Weekend as Assembly
The attractional church puts huge stock in the weekend service to do lots of work. Many churches direct most of their operating budget towards the weekend service. Most of the staff is on hand to carry out the diverse attractions of the weekend service. Many pastors spend the bulk of their time preparing for the weekend service, leaving the actual pastoring of the church to support staff. In many churches, the weekend is the only official thing they do!
This approach is symptomatic of many of the claims previously made about the attractional church and featured in the above chart. If evangelism for the attractional church happens "inside," then a lot is riding on the weekend service. If the church exists to attract an audience, then a lot is riding on the weekend service. If growth is numbers and cultural relevance is the name of the game, a lot is riding on the weekend service. It is no wonder, then, that the attractional church is ever attempting to outdo itself (or the church next door), to "think outside the box" and take the weekend event "to the next level." Innovation becomes a core value because coming up with the next new thing (or latching on to the culture's next new thing) is paramount to the attraction of the weekend event.
The worship service has become an idol.
In many missional churches, the weekend service can be an idol too. But the temptation is less common, because the service is not seen as an attractional event meant to pack 'em in, but an assembling of the community to worship corporately and receive teaching from Scripture. Evangelism for the missional church mostly occurs "outside," so while the missional worship service can and often does contain some attractional elements, it is not designed to attract people outside the community to the church but to direct people inside the community to God and to their neighbors. To put it another way, it is not an advertisement for the church but an adoration of God.
I will once again cop to broadbrushing. There are plenty of self-proclaimed missional churches whose worship services are designed to be quite "attractional," and there are plenty of unapologetic attractional churches who feature God-centered worship music and more proclamational preaching. Certainly there is overlap. False dichotomies must be avoided, and my aim here is not simply to suggest an absolute either/or but to bring to the fore opposing mindsets and to propose that the difference in these mindsets matters. It matters greatly.
Louie Giglio (preacher) and Chris Tomlin (worship leader) are planting a church in Atlanta.
Sounds awesome.
Some people are upset.
They are concerned because of the potential for Passion Church to "suck up" believers from other churches, folks who may be attracted to Passion Church because, well, let's face it: Louie Giglio and Chris Tomlin are much cooler than what most of us have going in our churches. There is brand name recognition.
And that may (and probably will) happen. That sucks.
1. Do you really think losing people who are interested in the celebrity factor is a loss?
2. I've said it before: If you treat your church like a business, you will treat other churches like competition.
I'm going to be praying more and more churches that center on the gospel and celebrate God-centered worship rise up all over the place. We could use a lot more of them in my city.
I had an interesting few hours with my old friend Dermot this week.
Dermot is now a big-shot city lawyer- well all right he's a big-shot city lawyer working for the NSW Department of Water. He was here to talk to the Department's employees about issues of farmers breaking water regulations, stealing water etc.
Dermot and I go back to High School days when we were the nerds who just didn't fit in. He was always going to work in the law and I was always going to be the engineer/ scientist. He was dyed in the wool Liberal and I was radical Labor. We spent many hours debating political and economic theory- talk about a misspent youth!
It was clear that Dermot just doesn't get the idea of community. He lives in the suburbs, and life is about sitting in a metal cubicle that transports you to a concrete cubicle where you spend your days in fake interactions called "professionalism." Weekends are spent ferrying the various members of your small group (a.k.a the nuclear family) from your little brick cubicle to events and activities that are meant to make you feel like your life has some direction.
In that lifestyle church is just another event at a different cubicle.
He seemed to find it hard to understand a church building that is set up as a family room, and a ministry that is little more than sitting around talking to people in unstructured ways. I can understand that, because 20 years ago I would have had trouble with the concept too.
Whereas most churches are about building programmes and staging events, we seem to major on building up people. I hope that never changes, and that as our church grows in size we can find ways of keeping that space for people.
We talked about the relative merits of city versus small town living. I can see why living in the inner city might appeal, but living in the suburbs and commuting is crazy. He told me how in the suburb we grew up in, it now takes 20 minutes to drive a few kilometres. It takes him the best part of an hour to go to work in Parramatta which used to be a 20 minute drive.
With so much of work being knowledge and information based these days, most jobs can be done from anywhere. Why people commute like this is just beyond me. Perhaps it's because they cannot imagine a different way of living.
As we put him on the plane to return to Sydney, I realised that we can actually get to Sydney Airport in little over the time it takes him to get there from home.
There is so much to be thankful about living in the country. The biggest thing, I think, is the time and desire to travel at a slower pace with time for real community.
Here are some thoughts on the impact of World Youth Day in Sydney last week:
Alan writes – There are many aspects of the Roman Catholic Church that I have learnt to admire and draw from; so being near Sydney at the time of the ‘World Youth Day’ events was too good an opportunity to miss.
We waited two hours with hundreds of thousands of others to see the Pope stream past in a whirr of speed and security. Seeing all the security at work – dogs, diplomatic squads, helicopters, police on motor bikes, police on horses, police on push bikes and police in boats etc made the two hours nearly as quickly as the Pope. We wandered the closed of streets with tens of thousands of young Catholics. We toured the harbour to get a feel for the extent of the crowds – 200,000 people is a huge crowd. We watched the Stations of the Cross (see here) from a park in Circular Quay with the noise of trains, rail announcements, helicopters, ferries and cars all around. It was a very moving portrayal in the midst of the market place. And somehow the story of the crucifixion made more sense in the midst of the realities of a large city.
This was the first time I have ever seen western-secular-capitalist-society dwarfed by the Christian story, Christian values and young people openly and unashamedly living their faith. There were no evangelistic hard sells! No one peddling tracts! (oh; us protestants have so much to learn. Why are protestant gatherings like conventions of commission salesmen?) There were just tens of thousands of young Christians waving flags, singing and laughing all over the city. And they ruled the city.
The streets were closed to traffic but awash with people. Sydney, it seemed, didn’t know what to make of it – yet everywhere there was delight in what was happening and open conversations about faith, spirituality and belief. They were happening on the streets, in the cafes and the pubs. The shop keepers, proprietors of flash hotels and restaurant owners seemed more perplexed than annoyed that theses crowds weren’t buying. And all the talk of protests and concern about apologies might have been part of the media view but it wasn’t what it was like on the ground.
As we wandered the streets and listened and watched it slowly dawned on me this was the first time I had ever seen secular capitalist society step back, move beyond perceptions and prejudices of Christianity and enjoy watching, listening to and being with Christians. So for one weekend, in my life time, I can now say I have seen a major western city become the backdrop to the greatest story ever told. And to be honest, from my perspective; most Sydney-ites seemed to enjoy it, be moved by it and value it just as much as we did.
In a previous post I mentioned seven areas of society that the church needs to recover in order to effectively reach our culture.
Here is how I see that we are doing in Narrabri. In the current environment it's unlikely that any single congregation will have all the bases covered, but perhaps the church overall may.
Religion-- the church is "allowed" to operate in this area, but is increasingly having to make way for Islam, New Age etc. Like many small towns we still have the corner on the "market", but I've noticed over the years that the church is seen as increasingly irrelevant to most people. Even funerals and weddings are becoming more likely to be conducted by non-religious celebrants. We need to get a handle on the belief systems of ordinary people in order to know how to share the Good News with them.
Family- Most people admit that the church has something positive to offer families. We have playgroup, as do the Anglicans. Many churches offer children's programmes and some offer marriage and family education courses.
Education- High School ministry, Christian teachers, Community Centre. I think this is one area where the church is doping well.
Business- there are a few christian business men out there, making a difference in the area of commerce. Richard Orr from the Baptist church is President of the Chamber of Commerce and sees this as his specific mission field.
Government- lots of christians talk about running for Council but few do. The Ministers' Fellowship has a standing invitation to open each Council meeting with prayer. This is another area where christians need to do more.
Media- Vision FM. I confess ignorance as to the involvement of Christians in the community radio and local newspaper.
Arts: Lots of Christians involved in dance and music. I'm not sure about other areas of the arts. There is a fairly big influence of Christians in the Eisteddfod which would be the biggest arts event here. The Crossing Theatre has been very difficult to deal with lately in terms of co-operation for Christian movies being screened.
I guess it looks quite patchy doesn't it?
There are obvious areas where we all need to be praying.
We need to pray for Christians to infiltrate these various areas
WIDGETIZE